


overgrown

by herwhiteknight



Series: inktober 19 [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, No Dialogue, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 18:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21040640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herwhiteknight/pseuds/herwhiteknight
Summary: this skin don't feel like home, it's all overgrown ~pvris, what's wrong





	overgrown

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna do inktober for whatever days I'm inspired! Not gonna bother with the order 'cause that's how I wanna do this thing. Enjoy the madness! I guess.

We'll start with the obvious. You are too young to feel this old. Your skin shouldn't fold, your eyes shouldn't droop, your lips shouldn't sag. Your expression shouldn't look so haunted, facing atrocities you didn't commit during an act so innocent.

You know you saved her, but you paid a price. You lost your arm. You'd never fight again.

Who cares.

What's worse - is that you lost  _ her _ .

We'll continue with something a little less so.  _ Why  _ you jumped into the fray. Why you were so recklessly stupid.

You've tried to tell yourself it's because it's what you  _ do _ . Protector, mama bear, caretaker. Selfless to your detriment.  _ Obvious  _ detriment in this case. Dismembered for your teammate. Your  _ teammate _ . It's what you do, you've told yourself. It's what you do. Could've been anybody.

Lying in your bed for hours on end, though, and the reason has grown stale. 

You've watched the sunrise and the sunset, filtered light through your window eat it's way across your torso, then your legs and off the edge of the bed until it dies. Resurrects itself next morning to devour and die once more. An endless cycle of feed and fascination. 

You feel like a plant. Stuck. Rooted. But with no reason to move. Your father comes in, your sister sometimes too. They bring you food, bring you water. Try to nurture you. Try to help you survive. Maybe even thrive.

And you grow, you suppose. Rooted in bed, watching sun drift across your torso, your legs, the edge of your bed. The final missing piece for a sustainable life. The bandage comes off from your stump and it's grown too. Sealed up in an awkward crooked stitch, and you can't even touch it, much less look at it.

_ What if it still hurts? _

You already know the answer to that question though. 

And so, the final thing. What we know to be the least obvious, that is somehow the most obvious. 

You love her.

Denial is a powerful enemy, and self-denial, a protective dismissal of emotions, even more so. A war waged within yourself, and a war that isn't even wished to be won. There's no stalemate, just desolation and agony. 

You don't love her, you can't. She ran from you. You'd saved her and she had  _ ran  _ from you. How dare she take your heart with her? And so you can't love her, not with this hollowed husk of a body. Not dried up and left to remain wild and untamed and angry.  _ So _ angry. You can't love her. So you  _ won't  _ love her.

You won't. 

She left you to grow in all the wrong ways, stretching and spreading yourself thin to fill the gaps and cracks of crumbling walls and footpaths falling into disrepair. She left you to swallow sunlight and spit it back out when healing tasted too bitter.

She left you to stitch yourself back together in a jagged scar that you can barely stand to look at, a scar that haunts you. A scar that still hurts, that'll always hurt. 

And so, you're left with the obvious. You're too young to feel this old. And you're too young to feel like you've lost everything.


End file.
